Essence of Gru
by Thumb Mode
Summary: Dave the minion had fallen madly in love with his boss' charming wife, Lucy. Never had he wanted anything as much as he wanted her, and to get her love he would do whatever it takes... A dark tale that's definitely not for children. COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

_Dave the minion had fallen madly in love with his boss' charming wife, Lucy. Never had he wanted anything as much as he wanted her, and to get her love he would do whatever it takes... A dark tale that's definitely not for children._

_Disclaimer: I do not own Despicable Me._

**Essence of Gru**  
by: Thumb Mode

Dave still remembers the day he first met Lucy Wilde. She had the most winsome smile and the kindest eyes he had ever seen, that melted his little heart the moment he set his gaze upon her sweet face. He had never been in love before, so that magical point in time hit him hard (in a happy way) like a rampaging truck on a clear highway in Nevada, and Dave was never the same again.

Unfortunately for him, Lucy had fallen in love with Gru, the bald, overweight and grumpy ex-villain whom Dave worked for. At first, he thought he had a chance even when the two had begun dating ("In the looks and humor department, I'm certainly much better!" Dave thought bemusedly), but then when Gru married Lucy, he was crushed.

It certainly seemed unfair because, on that first day, who would have thought that Gru and Lucy would eventually become a couple? They could not be any more different. Lucy was a quirky, cheerful nymph-like angel, while Gru was a boring, over-the-top serious swine with a perpetually angry look on his face. Gru had even said that he didn't _like_ Lucy. Obviously, that had changed.

Meanwhile, Dave had been smitten from the start. He had immediately envisioned a happy future with her. If only Lucy had widened her horizons, then she might have seen that Dave was a far better match for her.

Still, there was something about Lucy being a human, and Dave being a gibberish-speaking unicellular minion, that came in the way of any possible relationship between them.

After the wedding, something inside him just clicked. Like that evil purple serum, only more evil. It was the feeling that he had lost everything, that he had nothing more important to lose, and that he would do anything, absolutely anything, to get her love. Even if it meant betraying the boss who had cared for him. Even if it meant even worse...

As the saying goes: All is fair in love and war.

Gru does not seem to be able to do anything on his own ("the impotent twat!" thought Dave) so he brought a few minions with him on his honeymoon. Luckily, he brought Dave. On their wedding night, Gru instructed his minions to stand guard outside the suite to ensure that nobody came to disturb them. Naturally, with Gru being an ex-villain and Lucy being a secret agent, with a good share of enemies between them, the hazard of unwanted visitors was very likely.

Mischievous as they were, the minions knew enough to respect their boss' privacy and need for peace on this special night, so they did just that.

But not Dave. He had other plans (love tends to do that to people or to, in this case, minions). And he came to the honeymoon well-prepared. Surreptitiously he took out an AV recording bug that he had smuggled out of Gru's laboratory. It was a fairly obsolete, but no less useful, piece of technology that Dr. Nefario had invented on a lazy night. No bigger than an ant and capable of flight, it was the perfect tool to secretly record the goings-on on the marital bed.

Dave let the bug loose into the room via the space beneath the door, then directed its motion using a remote control. As his fellow minions were already tired and sleepy from a day-long party, they weren't alert to what Dave was doing. Perfect, thought he. He perched the bug atop the headrest, then watched and listened.

Lucy was giggling. (Dave blushed. Oh, how her voice gave him the fuzzies!) She was a bit flushed in the face, evidently from at least a couple of drinks. The spaghetti strap of her white negligee hung precariously from the edge of her left shoulder. Her red hair was unkempt. Still, Dave thought she was the loveliest creature she had ever seen.

And then, Gru came into view. He had already disrobed, save for a small towel that barely hid his crotch area. Dave had to suppress his gag reflex to keep himself from barfing. No wonder Gru insisted on wearing full body clothing even when the climate was hot. He was flabbier and saggier than a partially deflated Mizhelin mascot balloon.

Lucy sat herself on the edge of the bed. Gru grinned. He knelt before her and, taking her hand in his, asked, "My dear Lucy, why do you love me so?" (Dave had the same question.)

"Oh, Gru," she giggled, "haven't I already told you, like, a hundred times and fourteen times?"

"I want to hear it again."

"Well, okay." She smiled. "I love your voice, especially your accent. It reminds me of Arnold Swazinigger. It's so sexy. And I love your bald head. I just love running my hand over it. It's so smooth and oily, like the head of Buddha, which is a big plus to me since I'm Buddhist. But, above all, do you know what I love most about you?"

"Come on, say it."

Suddenly, like a tigress, Lucy sprang from the bed and tackled Gru down the floor. "Your smell! Oh, it's so intoxicating! Oh! It drives me so wild, aaaahhh! Especially down here. Oohhh! And your cute little peepee, I love it too, mmm..."

Dave permitted himself to throw up at this point.

They returned home a couple of weeks later. Gru and Lucy were exhausted, but apparently very satisfied. So were the minions who were brought along on the trip. Dave was the only unhappy minion after the honeymoon, though he did his best to not show it.

Nonetheless, despite the heartbreak and the disgust, he came away with very important information that was crucial for his mission.

_(to be continued)_


	2. Chapter 2

One weekday sometime after the honeymoon, at the Gru residence:

"Lucy-poo, where are you?"

"I'm in the bedroom, sweetie-Gru. What is it?"

"Get your yummy butt over here this minute. We have lots of mail to answer."

"Okay, sugar piggy. Let me just put on some clothes, I'm wearing nothing but your favorite lace panties."

"Oh, really? Rawwr. You don't have to wear anything else, then. Come over here and let me see those cute pink cheeks."

Luckily, it was early afternoon and the girls were all at school, so they weren't forced to hear this nauseating nastiness going on between their parents. Unfortunately, the minions did hear, so there was a flurry of groaning and vomiting throughout the underground laboratory.

But there was one minion who was able to withstand the barrage of this sickening sweetness. Thanks to his several days of studying the Gru couple's bedtime antics, Dave had achieved immunity from these ridiculously classless courtship conversations. He sauntered as fast as a minion could to the living room, from where Gru had called.

He was stunned when he saw Lucy. She was even more lovely in all her natural glory. Although he had seen her body many times before, he could never get tired of staring at it.

On the other hand, Gru did not seem to notice. He was too busy answering letters from their wedding guests. (How insensitive, thought Dave.) Lucy slid herself on the sofa beside her husband and put her arm around his big shoulder.

"Why do these people insist on snail mail?" Gru groaned impatiently. "Haven't they realized that email has been existing for, like, fifty years already?" He scribbled his signature at the bottom of the letter that he had just written. Having done more than a few dozen in succession, his hand had already become quite numb.

"Well, there are some people who insist on the traditional, you know, especially when it comes to weddings," said Lucy.

"Do we really have to respond to these in writing? Can't we just make a generic response on the computer, print it out, and send it to these people? It's more efficient that way."

"Oh, Gru, they wrote to us by hand, so of course we have to respond them by hand. It's just proper, etiquette and all that." She took her contact lenses from the side table and applied some fluid on them, before putting them on her eyes.

Gru watched her with some impatience. "Here, then," he said, dropping a pile of letters in front of Lucy, "go get a pen and make yourself useful."

The couple was so busy that they did not notice Dave had already stolen a few of their letters.

For the next couple of weeks, Dave worked hard on his corner of the laboratory. He interacted very little with his peers. A few of them, particularly his closest friends Kevin, Stuart and Jerry, noticed the change in the usually goofy and sociable Dave, and became concerned. However, when they tried to approach him to ask him what was wrong, Dave brushed them away, saying that he was too busy preparing for a top secret mission that would involve Gru. Upon hearing their boss' name, the other minions questioned no further and left him on his own.

And then, one evening, when all the other minions had fallen asleep after a day of heavy partying, Dave quietly went into Gru's personal office...

But Gru was nowhere to be found.

_(to be continued)_


	3. Chapter 3

Dave smiled. Of course Gru would be gone. Just that morning, he had received an encrypted message from the Anti-Villain League e-mail address, detailing a most important case that required his assistance. According to the message, a top secret agent had disappeared while on a top secret mission somewhere in Asia. He was believed to have been captured by the enemy and detained in a dangerous, treacherous place that was especially hazardous to women, children and non-human creatures.

It was thus up to Gru to save that agent, since no one else had the skills and the smarts to undertake the mission. It was only Gru who had the capability to perform this challenging task, it said. Of course he was to be provided with all the gadgets and the costumes and the cool cars that he needed for his mission, and that money was no object; he was assured to be most handsomely compensated once the agent was rescued.

It didn't take more than a minute's thought for Gru to press the button for "Yes." After all, if he were to be honest with himself, domesticity did not really suit him. He thirsted for adventure and for a desire to prove himself.

After a few words explaining the situation to his wife and his daughters (he wouldn't be back for about a month, he said), Gru headed for the Anti-Villain League headquarters.

So, now, finally, Dave had a chance with Lucy. But he wasn't about to make his moves just yet. There were still more to be done, if he were to win Lucy's love. Sending Gru on a fake mission was merely the first part of the plan.

The first night after Gru's departure, the minions had the biggest party ever. Their boss had not left them with anything to do, so they took advantage of their freedom by dancing and singing and eating and drinking throughout the evening. They also invited Lucy and the girls to the celebration. Before the hour was over, the minions and the ladies have all had their fill of fruit and ice cream. Soon thereafter, they felt too tired and all fell asleep where they were.

All, except Dave. That was the second part of the plan. The sleeping elixir that he had concocted using Dr. Nefario's laboratory notes worked really well. Just a glassful mixed into the ice cream machine, and all the other minions and the ladies were down for the night. It was a slow-acting chemical, so before the partygoers had a clue of what was going on, they had already ingested enough potion to knock them out for at least eight hours.

Eight hours was more than enough time. Dave didn't even have to hide the sound of his footsteps as he entered Gru's office. It was empty, save for a plain wooden desk near the right edge of the room. Dave walked to it. At the underside of the desk, no bigger than Barack Obama's mole, was a black button. Dave pushed it. Noiselessly, the floor opened near his feet, revealing a narrow staircase leading down to a dark room. Dave descended, pushed another button, and the hidden room was hidden once again.

In the middle of the room, all tied up and slumped like a hog in a country fair, was Gru. He was unconscious, and had been that way since late afternoon. Several miles along his way to the Anti-Villain League, somewhere near a sparsely populated cornfield, his car had suddenly stopped working. With a muttered curse, he alit from the vehicle. A tiny bug, something like a beetle, flew in front of his face and perched on his nose. He swiped his hands to get it off.

And that was the last thing he experienced, before everything suddenly went dark.

Unknown to Gru, Dave had sabotaged the car. Prior to the trip, the minion had attached to the engine a device that would clip the coil wire after the vehicle had been driven a number of miles, causing the engine to suddenly stop working. And then, Dave had hitchhiked into the back compartment, and waited for his chance. Once the vehicle had stopped, and once it was safe to do so, Dave sent a remote-controlled bug of his own invention flying into Gru's nostril and straight into his brain, knocking and keeping him unconscious.

Dave then brought his boss' unconscious body into his office for further processing. This was the third part of the plan. Using a mechanical lift, the minion undressed the body and dragged it up and into a huge glass flask. The KO bug was working perfectly. Gru didn't even stir. Even though he was already helpless at this point, unconscious or not, it was integral to Dave's plan that the boss _never_ roused even for a bit. After all, fear and other negative emotions messed up with the odors of a human. Dave wanted Gru to smell just fine.

This also meant that he could not use sleeping elixirs and other substances to knock out Gru, as chemicals also interfered with a human being's natural smell. It took Dave many sleepless nights to come up with the KO bug, which pricked into the consciousness parts of the brain, thus rendering a man instantly unconscious, but it turned out to be all worth it.

And, more importantly, since he didn't want festering bacteria to begin digesting the body before he even had a chance to work with it, Dave needed Gru alive. Or, at least, until he was done with what he needed to do.

Dave pushed a button. A long narrow pipe with a plastic mask, the kind that hospitals use in intensive care units, attached itself from the top of the flask onto Gru's nose and mouth, forming an airtight bond and feeding him with oxygen. Another tube with a large needle poked a hole into Gru's veins, feeding him with nutrients.

And then, from the bottom, a clear odorless fatty substance slowly seeped into the flask, completely encasing Gru in a thick waxy blob. Using his knowledge of chemical transfer, Dave calculated that the enfleurage would take three weeks to complete. After one last look at Gru's corpulent body entombed in what looked like a huge load of mucus, Dave ascended the stairs, went to the laboratory, and snuggled himself upon the sleeping Lucy's bosom.

_(to be continued)_


	4. Chapter 4

For the first time since the wedding, Dave was very, very happy, and it showed. No longer did he spend his days brooding in his private corner at the laboratory. The morning after Gru "left on a top-secret mission," Dave was bouncing on an imaginary trampoline as he _wheeee'd_ and _whooo'd_ while dancing the samba and devouring a foot-high six-flavor sundae. It was as though somebody had injected him with an overdose of oxytocin, honey and rainbows.

His fellow minions more than welcomed the positive change in Dave's mood. Of course, none of them were emotionally intelligent enough to correlate the wedding and Gru's leaving with Dave's behavioral changes.

That didn't mean that Dave was done yet. He still had other tasks in his agenda for execution.

Meanwhile, Lucy spent most of her free time being a mother to the girls. It was obvious that they enjoyed each other's company. During the weekend, they went shopping for clothes, spent hours at the spa and salon (which Lucy and Margo loved), took yoga and capoeira classes (which Edith especially enjoyed), and other things, and culminated the day with a trip to the amusement park (which Agnes had been looking forward to all week).

During school days, they would hang out at the mall for supper and dessert. Sometimes, they brought a few minions along (and Dave was always happy to oblige), but more often than not, they didn't. Girls' days out usually didn't include the minions, since they were mostly male.

Despite always being free to do their girl stuff without the man of the house, the ladies all missed Gru. They often wished that he would be back soon. Every few days, they received messages from Gru's e-mail address, talking about the mission and being homesick. They would write back, telling him of their day-to-day adventures and how much they missed him too. Little Agnes, who was the favorite of her father, wrote more than her sisters did, sending him messages twice a day.

Of course, it wasn't Gru who was responding to those messages. He had been unconscious in his glass prison for so many days now. His warden, the new master of his e-mail address, had studied his erstwhile boss' communication style so carefully that he was able to mimic it very convincingly. Being quite imaginative, Dave did not have much trouble concocting the story of a man on a dangerous mission that was progressing slowly, but well... and of how he wished he were in his warm home with his family instead.

He especially looked forward to the messages from Lucy, who often sent letters, pictures and videos of the erotic variety. Ah, how Dave wished he could respond in kind, as himself, as a minion! Nonetheless, he feared that it wouldn't be long before Lucy suspected that something was wrong, since Gru wasn't sending any naked pictures of himself. This would have to be remedied quickly.

Two days later, at around noon, the principal of the school where the girls were studying was engaged in an urgent appointment with the diplomatic representative of a foreign country. Within an hour, Margo, Edith and Agnes were in a red car en route the local airport.

Thankfully, for Dave, the fourth part of the plan had been underway.

_(to be continued)_


	5. Chapter 5

Meanwhile, back at the Gru residence, Lucy was already dressed up for her night out with her daughters. They were supposed to go to the concert of a well-known boy band. She glanced at her watch. It was already 6:30 PM.

"That's weird," she mused. "They should have been home by about an hour ago. I hope nothing's wrong." She fished her cellphone out of her purse and dialed Margo's number. Being already in junior high school, she was the only one among the girls who was allowed, with some hesitation from her father, to have her own mobile phone.

_Sorry, the number you are calling is either unavailable or out of coverage area. Please try again later._

She called again. And again. Margo's phone had apparently been switched off. "Weirder and weirder," thought Lucy, now becoming even more nervous. "Margo wouldn't miss Juan Dirección for anything. That's it, I'm going to their school and picking them up." She ran to her car, got into the driver seat, took her contact lenses from their case, and put them on.

Within seconds, she felt a burning sensation on her eyes and she screamed in pain, lunged towards the steering wheel and hit her head, knocking her senseless.

When Lucy awoke, some hours later, on what felt like a hospital bed, she immediately realized that she could not see. Around her, she could hear the beeping of biometric machines, could smell alcohol and other medicinal odors, but she could see nothing but darkness. She put her hands to her face; there were bandages around her eyes.

"Oh my God... Doctor? Nurse? Anyone? Is anyone here?

"Lucy."

She felt her heart jump.

"Gru? Sweetie-Gru? Is that you? Is that really you?"

"Yes, Lucy-poo, it is I," she heard her husband's voice say.

"Oh, good heavens, my dear, dear Gru!" she wept. "How I missed you so much! Oh, I'm so glad you're here! I thought... I thought..." _That you were gone, that you were captured, that you were killed in your mission, that you had left me alone_, she wanted to say.

"Don't cry now, my love. I am here."

She reached out towards from where she heard her husband speaking. "Hug me, please? I've felt so alone all these weeks... I missed your embrace. I just missed you, so damn much..."

She felt the familiar warmth of his arms around her, the softness of his chest on her cheeks, and inhaled. It was the same sensual reassuring smell of his body that she loved so much. She groped for the smoothness of his bald head; it was as oily as ever. And she liked it that way. She stayed in his arms, just like that, relishing his scent and his softness, silently, letting the tears flow as he brushed her hair with his fingers.

The doctor came in a few minutes, bearing bad news: Lucy would never see again. Her optic nerves had become so severely damaged that even surgery would never be able to repair her eyes. Throughout this announcement, Lucy didn't flinch. She tightly held onto Gru's hand, bravely accepting this change in her life.

When she was sure they were alone again, Lucy let herself cry as much as she wanted. Her only comfort was that she knew that Gru, her husband, was finally home in her arms again.

Very much nearby, Dave silently shed a few tears. Lucy truly loved Gru. How he wished she could love _him_ instead, love him while seeing him with her eyes intact, as who he was, as a minion. But, alas! That wasn't meant to be, and thus he had to settle for second best. Settle for this. The fifth part of the plan.

_(to be continued)_


	6. Chapter 6

It has taken Lucy more than two weeks to get well enough before she could leave her private ward and return to her activities. Throughout the time of her confinement, she knew Gru had visited her everyday, staying for hours at a time, sometimes talking about the mundane things that they loved to talk about, sometimes just keeping her company, silently, with his presence, with his warmth, and with his scent. With all the hours she was with him in this room, she had wondered if he was still able to get any work done. Although she was curious about it, she very much appreciated his support and, preferring no alternatives, she had posed no questions about the topic.

She also knew that the girls had visited often in their after-school afternoons. She had listened to their day-to-day banters about the things she knew they cared about: Margo with her budding teen romances (much to the consternation of her father, Lucy thought), Edith with her video games, and Agnes with just being her usual cute and adorable self. It was as though nothing had changed, nothing at all, aside from the fact that she could no longer see.

Lucy groped for the cane on the side of the bed and, with some difficulty, pulled herself up. She was glad to be back in their conjugal bedroom, with its smooth satin sheets and the songs of visiting birds. She walked about, enjoying the use of her legs while breathing in the fresh morning air. She had been slowly acclimatizing herself to her blindness, and was now getting better at getting around on her own.

With every step, she appreciated her husband more and more. The house had been remodeled to fit the needs of a blind person. The halls had been cleared of irregularities and obstacles, such as vases and Persian rugs, that could potentially cause tripping. Nonetheless, to prevent injuries in case of such accidents, furniture that used to be hard and sharp-edged were replaced with those of a softer and curvier variety. Corners had been rounded, and metal and granite had been removed in favor of plastic and softwood. Lucy imagined that the house now had the feminine minimalist look that she had admired so much in home design magazines, that she had wanted but to which Gru had disagreed. She felt a slight tinge of bitterness that it took such a disaster for him to comply with her requests.

Strains of Für Elise greeted her when she stepped into the library. Aside from structural changes, each room had been fitted with special music for easy identification: Pachelbel's Canon in D for the master bedroom, Brahms' Lullaby for the girls', the Blue Danube waltz for the living room, Waltz of the Flowers for the kitchen and dining, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony for the laboratory. She felt the edge of one of the shelves; it read, in Braille, "Horror and Mystery." She took a book and felt its spine. "Das Parfum. Die Geschichte eines Mörders." She sat on the recliner and began to read. She had learned Braille during her time at the hospital, and could now read almost as comfortably as she used to.

Somewhere in the middle of the novel, Lucy allowed her mind to wander, back to the time when she last had her vision. She could not remember much, other than searing pain, and then darkness. The doctor had determined that she had suffered a sudden migraine, which caused her to fall down and hit her head. The resulting concussion, he had said, had severed her optic nerves, causing her blindness. It was not supposed to happen that way. It must have been a freak accident of sorts.

She sensed a familiar scent wafting into the room. It was that of her husband. She felt his warm chest press against her face. She inhaled him, his irresistibleness and his deliciousness, driving her wild as it had done her many times before. She felt him descend to plant his moist lips upon hers, turning her fingers weak and dropping the book clattering closed at her feet. Once again, all cares and all thoughts of the bizarre driven out of her mind, she was glad that she was home.

And so was Dave, as he passionately returned her kisses.

_(to be continued)_


	7. Chapter 7

By midnight, the families living nearby had already retired after a long day of work and school. Mindful of the rising costs of electricity, they had all shut down their lights, and were it not for the few lampposts that stood every dozen houses or so, the street would have been invisible in the darkness.

And so it was in the Gru residence. The lady of the house had always been strict about turning down the lights by the tenth in the evening, although an hour or so after that, there would be a bit of a glimmer as young Margo would often sneak her cellphone to bed in order to, among other things, text with her girlfriends about boys and stuff.

But, tonight, there was no glimmer from the girls' room. In fact, it hasn't had any light for about a month now.

Meanwhile, the first floor hallway of the house was very briefly illuminated. It was also so quiet that any observer fifty feet away would have detected the soft trotting footsteps that pattered on the wooden floor, and probably would have wondered if the culprit were a child... or a ghost. And then, almost as briefly as it had come, the light went out, and the Gru residence was plunged into darkness and silence again.

Mrs. Lucy Gru didn't notice. If it had been in the past, she would have been quite indignant. Of course, she had by now lost the ability to see. Besides, tonight, she was deeply asleep, exhausted after a long and tremendously satisfying round of lovemaking with her beloved husband. Or so she thought.

Dave the minion descended the stairs to the laboratory, as he had done everyday for the past month. He held his breath, opened the door, and, summoning as much courage as he could, inhaled. And inhaled again. Then, he smiled. And danced about the laboratory floor. For the first time in weeks, he could breathe in here without using a gas mask. His efforts in cleaning up had finally paid off.

Before that, the laboratory was filled with the stench of sulfur and rotting meat. Or, more accurately, the stench of rotting minions and one human named Dr. Nefario. It had been very easy to kill them, Dave thought. He reminisced about how easy it had been, the first time, to taint the ice cream machine with sleeping potion, to knock out everyone else during an evening party. Later on, even before Lucy had realized that her girls were missing, he did it again, this time with a potent cocktail of ricin and tetrodotoxin. The sixth part of the plan. The minions and Dr. Nefario, now having exhausted his usefulness in Dave's eyes, never stood a chance.

Disposing of the bodies had been a different matter, however. Dave was but a tiny minion, and he had hundreds upon hundreds of minion bodies, and one human body, to get rid of. What was he to do? After hours of deliberation, after which by then the bodies had begun to decompose, he decided there was no way but the hard way: a few at a time, day in, day out. So as not to arouse the suspicions of the neighbors, he carefully ground up the bodies until they were no coarser than mulch, and then used it to fertilize the garden. When the volume of compost was becoming too much for the garden to handle, he began to sell potted plants online, thus making some extra cash from the demise of his co-minions.

He would have been done within a few days had he been doing this 24/7. However, he also had to be with his beloved Lucy, and he wouldn't have done otherwise for anything in the world. Hence, it took him weeks to get rid of the bodies, causing the laboratory to smell like garbage truck many times over. After disposing the bodies, he had to scrub, deodorize, scrub and deodorize the laboratory over and over again to eliminate the festering smell, but, by being with Lucy, it had been oh-so-worth-it.

Noting that Lucy's favorite quality of Gru was his scent, he had captured his boss in order to capture his scent. He had knocked out Gru, trapped him in a large glass flask, and used odorless fats to grab his essences via a process known as enfleurage, all while keeping him alive and unconscious. After a number of days, when the fats had been fully impregnated with Gru's scents, Dave extracted the fats from the body, replaced them with new fats, and repeated the process until Gru no longer produced any more of his desirable scent.

Dave then extracted the scents from the fats and distilled them to make them more concentrated. A few drops of the essence of Gru added to a solvent and Dave would smell like his former master for weeks. Fortunately, Dave had collected enough scent to last him for many years to come, so he didn't risk running out of it in his lifetime.

Once Gru no longer produced any more of his scent, Dave had no need to keep him alive. As with the minions, Dave murdered the helpless Gru very, very coldheartedly. However, unlike with the minions, he needed Gru's body. This had been the biggest dilemma that he had encountered prior to his execution of his plans, this challenge of preserving and animating a dead human body, that had almost caused him to give up and to let go and to fall into depression. Nonetheless, thanks to his dogged persistence, Dave was able to solve the problem and continued with his plans.

So, by animating Gru's dead body and using his scent, Dave would be able to fool Lucy into thinking that _he_ was Gru, her husband. But first, he had to get rid of the girls and the minions, and he had to make Lucy blind.

By mimicking Gru's signature, a skill that he had acquired by copying from Gru's handwritten letters, Dave was able to enroll the girls to military school in North Korea. There, they would be forced to become soldiers of the state and never be allowed to leave. The fate of the girls is unknown to this day; they may have been indoctrinated and assimilated into serving the nation, or they may be imprisoned, enslaved or dead. Not that any of that mattered to Dave, as long as they were out of the way.

As for Lucy, it had been too simple. By replacing her contact lens fluid with formic acid, Dave was able to irreparably destroy her optic nerves, rendering her blind. He then confined her in his "hospital room," which was nothing more than Gru's old office remodeled with the sounds and smells of a hospital ward. There, he pretended to be the people that Lucy had thought she encountered: Gru, the girls and the doctor.

He went to his work area and coughed. A black device, no bigger than a walnut, came out of his mouth. It was quite uncomfortable to have that thing sticking in his throat for hours at a time, and even more uncomfortable taking it in and out of his mouth, but he was already getting the hang of it. He worked on it for maintenance, then, satisfied with the results, popped it into his mouth again. He moved his tongue a bit, then talked. "Hello, Lucy," he said. Out it came in Gru's voice. Then, he flicked his tongue again. Margo's voice. Flick. Edith's. Flick. Agnes'. He smiled. The device was working just as good as before. By studying Gru's and the girls' voices and mannerisms over and over again, Dave was able to create the perfect voice modifier, so good that Lucy never suspected a thing.

He examined his face on the mirror. The hair on his head was starting to grow again. He took some hair waxing cream, applied it on his scalp, and, biting his lip, pulled. It hurt, and it felt so raw, but it had to be done. He had to be as bald as Gru. Lucy loved Gru's bald head, too.

He pulled down his pants. Thankfully, Gru had his deficiencies, which Lucy apparently liked (she called it his "cute little peepee"), so duplicating that part wasn't hard at all. (In fact, it had been bigger and better, thought Dave.) Lovemaking with Lucy was simply the best, and he was glad to see that she was more than satisfied with his ministrations.

He sighed. Everything that he had planned had succeeded. Thinking of this, he wondered: Why was he frowning? Why did he look so tired? He smiled, yet for some reason it felt so fake. He patted his scalp after the waxing; it still hurt, but not so much now.

It didn't hurt as much as it hurt to hear Lucy call him Gru instead of Dave. It didn't hurt as much as to know that she would never love him as who he really was, as a minion, and that he had to resort to these drastic measures for her to become his. Even now, she was still not his; she was still Gru's, now and forever. Even though it had been Dave she was kissing and fucking all these nights, it was still Gru she was making love to. She would never, ever be Dave's, no matter what he did from now until the day they die.

So was he happy?

This hopeless realization suddenly weighed upon Dave's final shreds of sanity, and he smiled, very sincerely now.

_Yes, I'm happy. I'm very, very happy._

And the tears flowed from his eyes, down into his grinning mouth.

_(The end. Thank you for reading!)_


End file.
